IAB Response to the Appeal from Julian Mehnle

[Leslie Daigle <leslie at thinkingcat.com>]

On February 8, 2006, The IAB received an appeal from Julian Mehnle
appealing the IESG decision to publish draft-lyon-senderid-core as an
Experimental RFC. According to the procedures in Section 6.5.2 of RFC
2026, the IAB has reviewed the situation and issues the following
response.

1. Summary of IAB Response

The appeal is denied and the IESG's decision is upheld.


2. Background

After the termination of the MARID WG, the IESG approved both
draft-schlitt-spf-classic-02 and draft-lyon-senderid-core as
Experimental RFCs. Both RFCs were to bear the following note:

     "The following documents (draft-schlitt-spf-classic,
     draft-katz-submitter, draft-lyon-senderid-core,
     draft-lyon-senderid-pra) are published simultaneously as
     Experimental RFCs, although there is no general technical consensus
     and efforts to reconcile the two approaches have failed.  As such
     these documents have not received full IETF review and are
     published "AS-IS" to document the different approaches as they were
     considered in the MARID working group.

     The IESG takes no position about which approach is to be preferred
     and cautions the reader that there are serious open issues for each
     approach and concerns about using them in tandem. The IESG believes
     that documenting the different approaches does less harm than not
     documenting them.

     The community is invited to observe the success or failure of the
     two approaches during the two years following publication, in order
     that a community consensus can be reached in the future."

Mr. Mehnle appealed the approval of draft-lyon-senderid-core on the
grounds that the proposed protocols were incompatible and that the IESG
should rewrite draft-lyon-senderid-core to assume the SPF classic
interpretation unless a new-style record was present. The IESG rejected
his appeal on the grounds that it involved a technical change to the
document but added the following strengthened note:

    "Note that the Sender ID experiment may use DNS records which may
    have been created for the current SPF experiment or earlier
    versions in this set of experiments. Depending on the content of
    the record, this may mean that Sender-ID heuristics would be
    applied incorrectly to a message. Depending on the actions
    associated by the recipient with those heuristics, the message
    may not be delivered or may be discarded on receipt.

    Participants relying on Sender ID experiment DNS records are warned
    that they may lose valid messages in this set of
    circumstances. Participants publishing SPF experiment DNS records
    should consider the advice given in section 3.4 of RFC XXXX
    (draft-lyon-senderid-core) and may wish to publish both v=spf1 and
    spf2.0 records to avoid the conflict."

Mr. Mehnle appealed to the IAB, reiterating his original issue and raising
the following process issue:

    Finally, the IESG's approval of conflicting experiments could be seen
    as a failure in following the standards process[9], which in section
    4.2.1, "Experimental", requires "verification that there has been
    adequate coordination with the standards process", which would by
    analogy not only mean coordination with standards track RFCs but also
    with other experimental RFCs.


3. Discussion

The process issue that Mr. Mehnle raises is rooted in RFC 2026,
Section 4.2.1:

   The "Experimental" designation typically denotes a specification that
   is part of some research or development effort.  Such a specification
   is published for the general information of the Internet technical
   community and as an archival record of the work, subject only to
   editorial considerations and to verification that there has been
   adequate coordination with the standards process (see below).  An
   Experimental specification may be the output of an organized Internet
   research effort (e.g., a Research Group of the IRTF), an IETF Working
   Group, or it may be an individual contribution.


On the basis of this text, the IAB concludes that the IESG's approval of
draft-lyon-senderid-core does not constitute an endorsement of this
technology but simply a publication for the "general information of
the Internet technical community". With respect to the issue of
adequate coordination, Section 4.2.3 reads (in part):

   If (a) the IESG recommends that the document be brought within the
   IETF and progressed within the IETF context, but the author declines
   to do so, or (b) the IESG considers that the document proposes
   something that conflicts with, or is actually inimical to, an
   established IETF effort, the document may still be published as an
   Experimental or Informational RFC.  In these cases, however, the IESG
   may insert appropriate "disclaimer" text into the RFC either in or
   immediately following the "Status of this Memo" section in order to
   make the circumstances of its publication clear to readers.

The IAB concludes that this paragraph explicitly permits the
publication of work that conflicts with existing IETF standards work,
provided that it bears an appropriate disclaimer. In this case, the
IESG provided a substantial disclaimer. Without determining whether or
not this experimental document actually conflicts, we conclude that
the disclaimer added by the IESG would in any event be sufficient to
allow the publication of this document as Experimental.


4. IAB Conclusion

On the basis of the available record and the IESG's response, the
IAB concludes that the IESG gave due consideration to the technical
issues raised by Mr. Mehnle and reached a decision according to
the process specified by RFC 2026. We therefore conclude that
the appeal should be denied and the original IESG decision upheld.


Note: IAB voting member Bernard Aboba recused himself from the
discussion and decision of this appeal.


Leslie Daigle,
for the IAB.


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